GAMBIER, Ohio — Josh Radnor glides down a wooded, gravel thoroughfare known as Middle Path,
almost dancing, as his smile greets strangers.

Then the unshaven Bexley native collapses on a grassy knoll and gazes upward at the grand
limestone structures that line the stately walk.

His love of the bucolic setting seems palpable during the early moments of his new film,
Liberal Arts — in which the scenery itself stars. About an hour northeast of Columbus,
Kenyon College — from which the
How I Met Your Mother actor graduated with a drama degree in 1996 — carries on mostly
removed from the outside world.

The village of Gambier boasts no stoplights (and barely had cellphone service until five years
ago). Amish peddlers sell pies and preserves in the town square. Peirce Hall, which serves locally
sourced meat, milk and produce to about 1,600 undergraduates, might be mistaken for Hogwarts.

Until now, Ohio’s oldest private college hadn’t received the Hollywood treatment.

“It almost seemed like the buildings were posing for me,” said Radnor, 38, who was inspired to
shoot at Kenyon during a campus screening last year of his directorial debut,
happythankyoumoreplease.

It was then, during a similarly giddy Middle Path stroll, that he turned to producer and
childhood friend Jesse Hara: “I’m nearly twice the age of everyone here. If I fell for a student,
that would be so inappropriate.”

An amused Hara’s reply: That’s a film.

Radnor wrote the script for
Liberal Arts during the next five months and, within a year, secured funding for it. The
movie, which opened Friday in some markets and is set to premiere next Friday in Columbus, features
a prime cast: Radnor; Richard Jenkins; Zac Efron; Elizabeth Olsen; and Allison Janney, a 1982
Kenyon graduate, who portrays a frosty English professor.

The characters constitute loose amalgams of people and exchanges from Radnor’s Ohio past.

And, although some of its leafy visuals suggest a distinct place,
Liberal Arts contains no mention of Kenyon or Gambier.

The film, Radnor maintains, is far more generic — a bittersweet coming-of-age valentine to
anyone who has sought companionship or challenged adulthood amid the uncertainty and odd social
fabric of academia.

After all, “a lot of people love their college,” he said. “They can bring themselves into their
experience.”

Reunion of renewal

As a jaded admissions officer at a nameless Manhattan university, Jesse Fisher (Radnor) has hit
a slump. An invitation to speak at a retirement party for his old history professor and friend,
Peter Hoberg (Jenkins), spurs an Ohio visit that re-energizes the weary city dweller.

During his stay, Jesse connects with a precocious 19-year-old undergraduate named Zibby (Olsen).
A platonic pen-pal friendship leads to romantic feelings, leaving the pair to question age and
boundaries.

Meanwhile, Jenkins’ character harbors doubts over his voluntary exit from the faculty, and
Janney’s tart-tongued Judith Fairfield, a radiant Romantic-era scholar, is unable to embrace
love.

A connecting theme is the struggle with life’s next step.

“Nobody feels like an adult,” Radnor said. “That seems to land on people, . . . like it’s
hitting on some great truth.”

For Janney, a Dayton native with a storied career in film, television and theater, the
transitional stage offers a useful platform.

“I think people get a lot of different things out of those four years — self-discovery and just
trying out your wings before it’s the big time,” said the Emmy-winning
West Wing actress, who cemented her passion pursuing plays at Kenyon. Appearing
sporadically is Nat (Efron), a surfer-dude philosopher who coolly eases Jesse’s growing midlife
pains.

Casting agents pushed for “a stoner kind of guy” such as Zach Galifianakis to play Nat, but the
writer-director sought a younger, less-slapstick persona.

Nat, placed among type-A students and ivory-tower intellectuals, is “the smartest character in
the movie,” Radnor said.

Acclaim from critics

Before the latest Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, where studio bosses jockey each
January to lay claim to unknown fare, IFC Films President Jonathan Sehring already knew of
Liberal Arts’ Buckeye State connections.

A Kenyon alumnus himself, Sehring previously tried to nab Radnor’s
happythankyoumoreplease — a New York indie comic drama — but was outbid.

After a
Liberal Arts showing during a bleary-eyed Sundance shuffle, he turned to a colleague: “Am
I crazy, or is this really good?”

“It’s sweet; it’s genuine — totally believable,” said Sehring, who, after landing
Liberal Arts learned that he and Radnor, though years apart, had grown up blocks apart in
Bexley.

“You can’t help but watch and say: ‘Where is this place?’”

Reviews have been positive. A
New York Times critic called the characters “incisively written and acted.”
Entertainment Weekly offered an A-minus grade, calling it “the wittiest, most perceptive
college comedy in years.”

Filming took place in June 2011, with Kenyon students and staff members serving as extras. Space
was offered up at nearby residence halls, cafes and homes.

Even on-screen, the tiny campus projects a real “intimacy and intensity,” said Kenyon American
studies professor Peter Rutkoff, 70, a longtime Radnor friend and loose model for Jenkins’
character — one that the educator of four decades said exemplifies “sort of the Kenyon secret . . .
the networks and relationships.”

Room for debate

The deep dialogue in
Liberal Arts mirrors that of many college students. Jesse mocks Zibby for her love of
teen-vampire novels. They discuss opera and life-changing professors. Existence is pondered.

But can Radnor, whose character jokes about “being fully unemployable” with his English and
history degrees, justify Kenyon’s hefty price tag? The college’s combined tuition and fees this
year: $54,760.

“It’s a totally good and valid question,” he said. “To saddle someone with so much debt, . . .
feels like it could be irresponsible.”

Still, Radnor lamented that such concerns might be “hijacked by the idea that you should only
train for something that can get you employed.

“That’s not what college is about.”

He shifts the conversation to his own experiences — of falling in love with Romantic poets, of
starring in David Mamet and Neil Simon plays, of learning from well-read classmates, all of which “
teaches you how to have a conversation, to engage with an idea, to problem-solve.”

Janney concurred. It was during her freshman year that she auditioned for visiting director and
legendary actor Paul Newman — Kenyon class of 1949 — who encouraged the student to develop her
craft.

Higher education, she said, “is a great steppingstone for making connections, even if you’re not
a great student.”

“Because of these people, it all just kind of led to what’s happened.”